One of Mombasa police station attackers did her KCSE in 2013

A bomb expert prepares to check three bodies of women who attacked the Central Police Station. (Photo: Gideon Maundu/Standard)

Three women Sunday made an audacious raid on Central Police Station in Mombasa in a suspected terror-related attack.

Details of their identities began to emerge Sunday evening as security officials pondered the implication of the attack on the facility.

Reports now indicate one of the attackers has been identified as Fatma Omar, a 23-year--old former student at a day girls' school in Mombasa.

Fatma, who was shot in the forehead and severely burnt in the fire that followed what is believed to be a petrol-bomb attack, did the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education exams in 2013.

Further reports show they were dropped at the entrance of the station before staging a false theft report as a cover-up to detonating the explosives.

Sunday evening, reports revealed that three women said to be related to the deceased had been detained for interrogation amid claims that police had been on high alert since Saturday night following intelligence reports about an impending attack.

The other women were said to be 32 and 33 years old, according to records seen by The Standard and sources who believe the attackers were aided by people still at large and who drove them into the police station.

Mombasa was still in shock by Sunday evening, 10 hours after the raid following reports that two accomplices had escaped as carnage spread at the station that was once hit by a suicide attacker and militant rioters in the 1990s and 2000s.

The motive of the raid is not clear and the women have not been linked to any terrorist groups.

But sources told The Standard that the slain women most likely came to rescue a suspect or suspects detained from Mombasa's Old Town on Friday.

And Sunday afternoon, some of the suspects in police cells were evacuated to unknown places, apparently for interrogation.

Although the women died in the attack, their audacity has puzzled terrorism experts and raised fears within security circles that the attack, which coincided with the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack in the United States, could have been meticulously planned by highly radicalised women and aided by a terrorist cell in the coastal city.

"Three women (clad) in buibui (flowing black Muslim robe) came to Central Police Station to report that they had lost a phone. But while police were still questioning them, one pulled out a knife and attacked an officer and another lobbed a petrol bomb and the station caught fire," said Patterson Maelo, the Mombasa County police commander Sunday.

Mr Maelo said three women were shot dead and two officers were injured; one fractured a leg while another was stabbed.

"We do not know their nationality but they are Africans," Maelo said and described the slain women as "middle-aged".

Officials also expressed fears that terrorist cells were mutating and increasingly using women and children to infiltrate vital installations.

Security officials declared the 10.11am ambush a terrorist attack, but declined to give details of the origins and identities of the women whose corpses are now lying in the Coast General Hospital mortuary.

But The Standard independently established that two of the attackers were sisters and that some of the assailants were from Mombasa's Old Town. It has also been established that about five women were involved in the raid that forced fear-stricken policemen to jump through windows and flee as the attack intensified.

Two of the attackers are said to have escaped while their accomplices died in a hail of gunfire and what is believed to be a petrol/incendiary explosive.

Sources in the intelligence community confirmed that five women were involved in the raid and were most likely brought to the scene in a car and dropped at the station's entrance.

The sources also point out that two accomplices, including one who appeared pregnant, leaped over a fence and disappeared into the narrow streets outside the station as gunfire and fire raged.

Last evening, Mombasa County Commissioner Nelson Marwa claimed the women came to the station wearing bullet-proof vests under their black garments, a claim confirmed by a witness who reported that the women kept advancing before a hail of bullets aimed at the chest and stomachs and only fell when fire was directed to the head, legs and ribs.

The chain of events remains murky and scanty but most witness accounts indicate one woman approached the police desk shortly after 10am claiming she had lost a cellphone. An officer then demanded that they pull down their veils but only two of them obliged.

"Three refused to remove their veils," said an officer who was at the station during the assault.

"This refusal to co-operate aroused the suspicion of a duty officer who ordered them to step back from the report desk. The three then surged forward, with one wielding a knife and yelling "Allahu Akbar!" before stabbing two officers in the stomach and face," added the officer.

According to this officer, an explosive object was hurled from the doorway, igniting a huge fire amid gunfire.

An officer who survived told The Standard he emptied his pistol on one of the women because the first bullets aimed at her chest did not penetrate and she kept surging forward. She was then hit in the forehead.

A witness who claimed she came to see her husband in the cells alleged that inmates were also shouting "Allahu Akbar!" or God is great in Arabic.

She claimed the women started running away after one of them was shot and killed after igniting the fire, but were also burnt in the fire.

Maelo said an officer was wounded in the limbs, but it remains unclear how he was injured, although witnesses said it was probably after he jumped out of a window.

Maelo said that the fire burnt records inside the reporting desk.

One of the bodies believed to be Fatma's had a gaping bullet wound in the forehead and in the right thigh.

Another body had bullet injuries at the base of the neck and right hip. The third had a big bullet hole near the left armpit. Two of the bodies were charred, indicating extensive burning, while the third one, about six feet tall and light-skinned, had no evidence of burning.

All the women wore black outer and inner garments, including (black) gloves.

Mombasa Governor Ali Hassan Joho and rights group Haki Africa Executive Director Hussein Khalid condemned the act, describing it as cowardly and despicable. They also commended the police for swift action.